Best of Class award tops off Mikami family's heroic history

Mikami Vineyards owner/grower Jason Mikami with his daughter Kate, hand-numbering each and every one of the Mikami label bottles. Photo courtesy of Mikami Vineyards.

At this past January's San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, a total of 12 Lodi-grown wines were selected as Best of Class winners. "Best of Class" means exactly that: After judging all the wines, judges select their favorites in each class and price category

The 2019 Mikami Vineyards Lodi Petite Sirah ($35) was named the 2022 Best of Class winner for Petite Sirahs in the $35-$39.99 price category.

Petite Sirah as a varietal generally appeals to wine lovers with a penchant for big, dark, bold and even blustery red wines. But increasingly, over the years, we have noticed that the biggest and boldest wines are not necessarily chosen as Best of Class winners. Mike Dunne — the former Sacramento Bee wine columnist who also compiles the official tasting notes for the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition — has made note of the fact that the 2019 Mikami Petite Sirah is "an extraordinarily sleek and lively" example of the varietal... 

Feb 22, 2022 at 7:00 AM Permalink

The mayor takes a gold (for the 2018 Burlington Chandler Cabernet Sauvignon)

Burlington Chandler co-owner/grower Mark Chandler in one of his vineyards.

Besides a Sweepstake-winning white, Lodi vintners and growers garnered dozens of gold medals at the 2022 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition last month. The competition was stiff, involving wines from all over North America. In 2022, as in past years, this entailed over 5,500 entries submitted by some 1,000 wineries. As wine judgings go, this as as big as it gets.

For 25 years Mark Chandler has served as a judge at the yearly San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. This does not preclude him from entering wines bottled under his own brand into the competition. Thank goodness, because Mr. Chandler's 2018 Burlington Chandler Lodi Cabernet Sauvignon ($30) was awarded a gold medal at said competition...

Feb 21, 2022 at 8:00 AM Permalink

The supplanting of Plains Miwoks' sustainable life by European, Mexican and American cultures

Native dancers in traditional Miwok headbands at Mission San Francisco. 1816 lithograph by German-Russian painter/explorer Louis Choris.

Continued from A full telling of the Plains Miwok, the "first people of the Mokelumne"

The Indian population is declining. They live well free but as soon as we reduce them to a Christian and community life they decline in health, they fatten, sicken and die. — Mariano Payeras Borrás (1769-1823, and early 1800s Father-President of California mission chain)

Mexico gained its independence from Spain in April 1822. On July 4, 1848, Mexico ceded the territories known as Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo México (i.e., roughly, California and New Mexico) to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which also ended the two-year Mexican-American War...

Feb 17, 2022 at 12:00 PM Permalink

A full telling of the Plains Miwok, the "first people of the Mokelumne"

The Mokelumne River region's natural riparian environment — grassland and deep-rooted valley oaks, teeming with acorns — preserved today in Lodi's Jessie's Grove estate.

To know the people who originally lived in the watershed area now recognized as the Lodi Viticultural Area is to know why wine grapes grow so well here. Almost effortlessly, Lodi has become easily the most widely planted wine region in the United States, growing twice as much acreage of vines than Sonoma County and the vaunted Napa Valley regions combined (or you can say, more than the entire states of Oregon and Washington combined, plus at least another 25%).

This is a land blessed with an intrinsic ease of sustainability (in the original sense if the word) between natural environment, grapes and people...

Feb 10, 2022 at 9:00 AM Permalink

Joyous visual of Lodi's 2022 Wine & Chocolate weekend

Visiting wine influencers Sarah Unser (@winowanderlust, left) and Paige Comrie (@winewithpaige) pondering glasses of Peltier Winery's Fumé Blanc at the Sunday Brunch taking place at Wine & Roses Hotel.

Although there are many "serious" wine lovers who look forward to Lodi's Wine & Chocolate weekend each year, the participating Lodi wineries as well as the organization behind the event (Lodi Winegrape Commission) also look forward to this celebration for what it is: an opportunity to turn on wine aficionados who are discovering the joys of Lodi grown wines for pretty much the first time...

Feb 8, 2022 at 12:00 PM Permalink

A violet scented Petite Sirah and native style Zinfandel top Peltier wines crafted by star winemaker Susy Vasquez

Peltier Winery winemaker Susana Rodriguez Vasquez in the Schatz family's Coyote Creek Vineyard (Lodi's Clements Hills AVA).

Lodi's Peltier Winery & Vineyards produces an amazing Petite Sirah. Perhaps the finest in Lodi wine country. No doubt, this is what many wine lovers going from winery to winery in Lodi during last month's "Celebrate Petite Sirah!" event (January 15-17, 2022) may have already discovered, if they happened to have ventured out to Peltier Winery on northern edge of the Mokelumne River appellation, on the east side of the old Union Pacific Railroad tracks bisecting the City of Lodi.

A lot of Peltier's ascendant quality has to do with winemaker Susana Rodriguez Vasquez ("Susy," to her friends), who came aboard six vintages ago, in 2016. Before that, mind you, Peltier's wines were perfectly fine. It helped that one of their first bottlings, the 2005 Peltier Petite Sirah, garnered "Best of Class" and "Best of Region" awards at a California State Fair. The difference is that, today, every wine grown and produced by Peltier Winery is a home run. At least since Vasquez has been doing the batting...

Feb 1, 2022 at 8:00 AM Permalink

Lorenza's dry rosés defy age and exemplify the intricate minerality possible in Lodi-grown fruit

Lorenza True Rosé's Melinda Kearney with signpost marking her block in Bechthold Vineyard, Lodi's oldest vineyard (own-rooted Cinsaut planted in 1886).

A mother/daughter team finds rosé heaven in Lodi

One of the hottest wine categories over the past few years has been dry rosé. Everybody's drinking dry rosés. It's great for casual wine lovers, but the sensory complexity of bottlings out in the market has grown so varied, even connoisseurs have taken to sipping rosés in between their high class Bordeauxs and Burgundies.

Lorenza True Rosé is a brand that has been dedicated 100% to dry rosé since 2008. It is their specialty, their obsession — the "their" being a mother/daughter team named Melinda Kearney and Michèle Ouellet Benson — and all 15 vintages of their wines so far have been sourced almost entirely from Lodi...

Jan 28, 2022 at 7:00 AM Permalink

How a Lodi-grown white wine took the Sweepstake medal at the 2022 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition

The 2020 Acquiesce Viognier, winner of the 2022 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition Sweepstake medal.

What happened?

The question popped up this past January 14, when the results of the 2022 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition were announced. This event is the largest judging of North American wines in the world. According to the SFCWC website, the 2022 competition involved "approximately 5,800 wines submitted by over 1,000 wineries... [blind tasted by] over 50 judges representing winemaking, wine education, trade, hospitality, culinary, media, and other wine/food sectors..."

Out of all the white wines in the 2022 judging, a white wine grown and produced in Lodi — the 2020 Acquiesce Mokelumne River-Lodi Viognier ($32) — emerged as the white wine winner of the 2022 "Sweepstake" medal. Meaning: This wine was singled out by the 50-plus judges as the best of all white wines entered in the 2022 judging...

Jan 24, 2022 at 8:00 AM Permalink

Voluptuary & Lucid Wines opens tasting room in historic Sacramento warehouse

Voluptuary + Lucid owner/winemaker Kevin Luther in his spacious new urban tasting room/winery in Sacramento's Historic District.

It would behoove Lodi wine lovers who live or travel within the vicinity of Sacramento to mark down February 2, 2022 on their calendars. This is the day that Kevin Luther, the owner/winemaker of Voluptuary & Lucid Wines, opens the doors of his new tasting room/winery in the R Street Historic District corridor of Sacramento (at 1015 R St., next door to the Fox & Goose Public House).

This, however, will be a soft opening (given the current covid crisis), so you'll need to visit Luther's V&L Winery Tasting Room page to book your spot. The entire space has the size (high skylit ceilings) and weathered paint patina of a warehouse (the space was a Fuller Paint storeroom up until the 1950s, which has remained vacant up until now), which Luther is dolling up with seating areas between barrels filled with aging wine, walls of old books and a turntable to spin vintage vinyl...

Jan 20, 2022 at 9:00 AM Permalink

Micro-sized Sabelli-Frisch cultivates a welcome menagerie of misbegotten grapes

Adam Sabelli-Frisch with Flame Tokay, one of his favorite Lodi grapes that he describes as "rare, forgotten, under-appreciated."

The general thinking, when it comes to micro-sized wine wineries such as Sabelli-Frisch, which produces barely 50 to 100 cases of every bottling, is that craftsmanship on such a small scale had damned well better result in exceptional wines.

Still, it's not really a fair expectation. Why should big commercial wineries be excused for boatloads of ho-hum or even awful wines, while the peons are cut zero slack?

As with many of today's tiny, handcraft producers, the L.A.-based Sabelli-Frisch at least does not cut itself any slack when it comes to its chosen style. Insofar as quality, the wines are exceptional... 

Jan 13, 2022 at 2:00 PM Permalink